60 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



some country districts as a decoration for a fireplace- 

 screen or chimney-board, a framework of wood being 

 covered with the plant. We are told that if this be 

 sprinkled with water about once a week it will continue 

 fresh and green-looking for some months. This vitality 

 led to another old custom. On Midsummer Eve betrothed 

 maidens used to gather two plants of orpine, and set 

 them on a trencher, and estimate their lovers' fidelity (or 

 possibly their own fickleness) by the continued flourishing 

 and well-being or the reverse of one or the other plant. 

 Hence its name got a considerable addition to it, and was 

 sometimes given as live-long-love-long. Its most familiar 

 English name, orpine, is a curious illustration of the 

 perversity we sometimes meet with in old plant nomen- 

 clature. It is derived from auripigmentum, the gold- 

 coloured pigment called orpiment, a most appropriate name 

 for the stoneci'op and several other plants of the genus, 

 but, by a perverse ingenuity, applied to almost the only 

 plant that does not possess the brilliant hue of orpiment. 



